The continuous miniaturization of integrated circuits has opened the path towards System-on-Chip realizations. Process shrinking into the nanometer regime improves transistor performance while the delay of global interconnects, connecting circuit blocks separated by a long distance, significantly increases. In fact, global interconnects extending across a full chip can have a delay correspondin...

Continued device scaling enables microprocessors and other systems-on-chip (SoCs) to increase their performance, functionality, and hence, complexity. Simultaneously, relentless scaling, if uncompensated, degrades the performance and signal integrity of onchip metal interconnects. These systems have therefore become increasingly communications-limited. The communications-centric nature of futur...

Integrated nanoscale photonic devices have wide applications ranging from optical interconnects and optical computing to optical communications. Wavelength demultiplexer is an essential on-chip optical component which can separate the incident wavelength into different channels; however, the experimental progress is very limited. Here, using a multi-component nano-cavity design, we realize an u...

Centimeter-range high-density optical interconnect between chips is coming into reach with current optical interconnect technology. Many theoretical studies have identified several good reasons why to use such types of interconnect as a replacement of various layers of the traditional electronic interconnect hierarchy. However, the true feasibility and usefulness of optical interconnects can on...

35 0278-6648/09/$25.00 © 2009 IEEE s today’s complementary metal oxide semiconductor (CMOS) technologies are scaled down to below 65 nm, conventional metal lines carrying signals in an integrated circuit face increasing challenges. As a short-term solution, the semiconductor industry adopted copper instead of aluminum for interconnects due to its low resistive behavior and good electromigration...

A reduction in the size of integrated optical devices and components while maintaining a high level of performance is a key challenge in photonics. The footprint of devices becomes even more critical for applications with limited physical space such as on-chip, silicon-based photonic devices. Optical interconnects are recently emerging as a promising approach for onand off-chip communications o...

We present the first measurements of O/E/O conversion latency in a hybridly-integrated optoelectronic/CMOS chip designed for chip-to-chip optical interconnection. Using an optical pump-probe technique, we perform precise measurements with picosecond resolution that closely match our simulations. Optical interconnects have the ability to alleviate the looming CMOS interconnect bottleneck by prov...

All Rights Reserved iii I certify that I have read this dissertation and that, in my opinion, it is fully adequate in scope and quality as a dissertation for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy. I certify that I have read this dissertation and that, in my opinion, it is fully adequate in scope and quality as a dissertation for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy. I certify that I have read this d...

As we continue miniaturization of circuits into nano-scale, interconnects have been recognized as the limiting factor for next generation of computing structures. To increase the density of integration many approaches have been proposed such as System on Chip (SoC), System in Package (SIP), and Networks on Chip (NoC)which all must address the interconnect issue address. Current approaches to So...

Over the last decade significant progress in optoelectronic devices and their integration techniques have made Free-Space Optical Interconnects (FSOI) one of the few physical approaches that can potentially address the increasingly complex communication requirements at the board-to-board and chip-to-chip levels. In this paper, we review the recent advances made and discuss future research direc...